Everyone is talking about how bad the National League pitchers made the American League batters look during the All-Star game, but nobody understands that it is supposed to be that way.

If you look at the way baseball is played and all the fundamentals of the game, then you would see that we should never have a game that scores more than ten runs total.

First, let’s cover the basics. You start with a tiny, round ball of yarn covered in a leather casing. Now take this ball and hurl it at speeds upwards of 90 miles-an-hour consistently at some poor guy who only has a helmet and a stick to defend himself.

Now the batter has to not only avoid getting hit with the ball, but make sure to make contact with a bat. And not only contact, but hit it well enough to reach base, and if it’s not too much trouble, give the crowd some excitement and send one out of the park.

Batting is the most difficult aspect of baseball. It has always been and will always be this way.

It was nice to see some good pitching in the All-Star game, but after the break it will be back to normal with a home run derby at every ballpark.

In the past few years batting percentages have been going up and so have the number of home runs being hit. Batters are being helped out by a number of things.

First and foremost is the ball. Modifications have been made to make baseballs more tightly-wound and causing the ball to jump off the bat when contact is made.

This not only adds home runs, but any hit then becomes harder to field.

Second, expansion teams are stretching the pool of pitchers very thin.

With every expansion team come at least 12 pitchers that were not in the major leagues already. When you have guys not good enough to play in the league playing anyway, things are bound to happen. Good things for batters, and bad things for defenses.

Along with expansion teams come new ball parks.

Has anyone else noticed how small and home run friendly these new ball parks are?

Third is the batters themselves. If you met some of the big hitters of the leagues outside of the ball park, you would think they played football.

Frank Thomas, for example, did play football in school. The guy is a monster.

He could play defensive line for the Bears if he wanted to.

Jose Canseco is a huge fella as well, and his ex-teamate Mark Mcwire has forearms like Popeye.

Cecil Fielder looks like he has snapped a few pigskins in his day. I would not want to get in his way on a slide to home plate.

The point is that some of these guys are unbelievably strong, and rumors of steroid use have also added to the question of how can these guys hit the ball so hard and so far?

As if pitchers did not have enough to worry about, the strike zone has been made smaller this year.

If things keep going at the rate they are, we will be looking at games that have scores like the NBA instead of baseball.

See ya.